Spain transport minister Oscar Puente offers resignation in wake of train accident

Spain transport minister Oscar Puente offers resignation in wake of train accident - Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente had requested a parliamentary committee convene Tuesday. (Diego Radamés/Europa Press/AP Photo/picture alliance)

After two deadly train crashes this year, Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente has said he will step down.

Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente offered his resignation on Tuesday in the wake of one of Europe's worst rail disasters in recent memory last week, which killed 69 people.

The tragedy, Spain's second fatal rail collision in less than a year, has intensified scrutiny of railway safety and added political pressure on Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez ahead of parliamentary elections on November 29.

In January, a train crash in the southern Andalusia region killed 46 people.

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"A transport ​minister ‌in a country like Spain cannot continue in ‌office with two accidents ‌of ​this severity in less than a year," he told legislators while announcing his intention to resign.

Puente, a member of Sanchez's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, also said he would withdraw his name from the list of parliamentary election candidates. He did not specify when he would leave ​his post.

Puente's political opponents had demanded he step down, while train unions had been unhappy with him for appearing to pin blame for the disaster on one rail control centre operator.

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Government unveils new rail safety measures

Just hours before addressing legislators, Puente had presented improved rail network safety measures and told a press conference the government would "work tirelessly to achieve and regain the public's trust in high-speed rail."

This included plans for control centre software that would issue automatic alerts and make it easier to spot traffic anomalies, and an AI agent for system oversight to "minimise the possibility of human error."

Another measure Puente mentioned was requiring a second operator to confirm decisions made in scenarios involving a faulty automatic safety system.

The accident happened during the failure of an automated safety system that had stopped all trains along a 63-kilometre stretch of track between Madrid and Seville on Wednesday morning.

Despite the stoppage on the line, a control centre allowed a high-speed train operated by state-owned rail company Renfe to continue its journey.

The Renfe train collided with a stopped train owned by private Spanish company Iryo outside the village of Urda in Toledo province.